


as the lord is my shepherd (you're still in the dumpster)

by Mici (noharlembeat)



Series: Fools in Alleyways [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Daredevil (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Comedic Elements, Gen, M/M, No Spoilers, Pre-Series, church fic, mild violence, pre-AOU, slightly angsty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-07
Updated: 2015-05-07
Packaged: 2018-03-29 09:42:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3891616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noharlembeat/pseuds/Mici
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two Catholic boys meet where all good Catholic boys meet.</p><p> </p><p>(or: there's only room in this town for one idiot in alleys)</p>
            </blockquote>





	as the lord is my shepherd (you're still in the dumpster)

**Author's Note:**

> No spoilers for AoU or Daredevil! Also I'm not Catholic (HA HA HA) so any mistakes are unintentional, as everything I know I learned from google.

Sometimes Matt thinks that what people who can see get right about being blind he could count on one hand and still have fingers left over, but he’ll concede that he might not be the most average of blind men. But still, sometimes it’s really a wonder that people think he can do anything at all.

Like church.

The women at his church spend an inordinate amount of time fussing over him. And not the young, attractive women (they spend their time in the front of the shrine, probably giving Father Daniels, who is 25 and who should have his head examined, because they’re not there admiring his holiness) but the Italian, Mexican, and Irish mothers, the grandmothers, the ladies whose kids have outgrown or refused to go back to church on Sunday, who have no one to prod, cajole, and otherwise bully into communion.

Every week at least one of them offers to help him up the aisle, and another offers to help him to the confessional booth, all the while he can hear the others muttering about poor thing, poor dear, it’s such a shame, and it makes Matt wonder if maybe he should consider another church, maybe one that only has mass for people who just want to get in, and out, and aren’t even sure God is listening anymore, but there are two problems with that: the first being that he’s pretty sure they would actually call the police, convinced he had fallen into a ditch and died there, and second, well.

They make really good cake. And some days Matt just wants a slice of cake.

But the attitude that the little blind Murdock boy needs assistant is so prevalent, so pervasive, and so all encompassing that one day, when it just stops, Matt is actually confused as to what to do. He sits for a minute as he hears people shuffle by him, until the guy sitting next to him - tall, incredibly big, taking up space like he was engineered in a lab to only do that, and even separated by three feet of wooden bench a beacon of noise and light and fire - says, “do you need help?”

Matt swivels his head, honestly unsure for a split second and hating it, and finally takes his cane and stands up. “Sorry,” he mutters, and the guy stands, unbearably tall and offensively hale, his lungs chugging oxygen like they’re on Mt. Everest and he’s got a hold of a tank of good air, his heart pumping out a beat so insistent Matt could almost hear the dubstep.

“It’s no problem,” the guy says, and doesn’t touch Matt, but he crowds him a little, and Matt’s getting the distinct impression that he is the sheep and this guy is the plucky sheepdog, and it’s _really irritating_.

Once they take communion, Matt almost books it out of the church, feeling pent up and frustrated and hating why, because it’s one thing when little old ladies cluck and fuss and hand him a plate of white cake with sickly chocolate frosting, but it’s another when they stop because a human monolith either intimidates them, or because he’s _taking their place_.

No way. No how. This is not happening.

That night, when Matt ends up in a dumpster nursing a sliced open leg and a possible concussion, instead of getting up and going home to nurse his wounds, he just fumes in silence, irritated as the world blinks in and out of focus with each interrupting breath he takes. 

~~~~~

On Wednesday, Steve goes for confession.

The church is quiet, but that isn’t why Steve chose it. He chose it because his old church in Brooklyn still made him feel, every time he saw it, like he was missing something inside his chest, like he was 90 pounds and the entire world was hammering on his body, as if he were a bad batch of steel that just needed a few more poundings to crack. He chose it because it was only a ten minute run from the Avengers Tower, and because it had that smell, that church smell of incense and lemon and candle wax, because it was the closest approximation to home that Steve had.

(Steve thinks of home and he thinks of Bucky’s mouth and his shoulders and then that makes him think of where one shoulder is metal, and he feels sick, so he doesn’t think of home for more than a few minutes at a time.)

It’s a nice church. It’s especially nice because Tony doesn’t know where it is and so he doesn’t spend his time hovering around when he’s bored and cranky, and it’s even nicer because Natasha doesn’t really have any opinion on Hell’s Kitchen outside of the fact that apparently there are some Russian boys who she’s not a terrible fan of and so when she comes along, she always ends up wandering away, distracted and making the guys on street corners sweat.

And it’s _really_ nice because Sam’s mother’s church is only a ten minute run in the _other_ direction, and she always saves a slice of the best German Chocolate Cake Steve has _ever_ had for him, as long as he walks her home after church, which he always does.

(Although Steve should stop thinking about anywhere in Manhattan being more than a ten minute run away, as apparently that’s really all it takes for him to span the entire island)

The church is quiet when he arrives; the only person there is the blind man who he sat next to at Mass on Sunday, after weeks of just seeing him shepherded up and down the aisles by a rotating band of women.

It was like looking in a mirror, where the mirror was still taller, heavier, and probably more capable of running a solid mile than Steve was before the serum. The blind man is sitting outside the confessional.

Steve only catches sight of his face for a second, but that’s all it takes. He looks like someone who has seen the wrong side of a police baton, for starters, but then, to top it off, the look on his face makes Steve think of those Goya sketches of madmen and Kronos eating his children; the lingering madness of someone who is righteously _furious_ , but knows how to hide it.

It’s a look that Steve once knew intimately, from how it appeared on his own face after every single time Bucky literally fished him out of a fight.

He stands there, silent, and the blind man isn’t looking, (stupid, _stupid_ , Steve thinks for a second), no, the blind man isn’t tilting his head Steve’s direction, and the embarrassment of this moment sinks in. “Excuse me,” he says because he doesn’t know what else to say, and slips into the confessional.

It’s a litany of sins. Every confession is the same, except every confession is a lie, because between the truths of _I had impure thoughts_ and _I killed someone who was trying to kill me_ , there is a truth beating at the center of his stomach, one he can’t say because it lies heavy on his tongue, _I fear I have no hope left in me, and that I’ll never find him, I’ll never find home again_. He doesn’t say it because saying it would make it true, and because even if he does, how could he admit something like that as if it were a sin? 

When he leaves, the blind man, he’s still sitting there, only now where there was lingering madness, there’s only a quiet, soft kind of certainty, and Steve knows that look too well. It’s pity. 

~~~~~

There is an art to listening to confessions.

But Matt listens to confessions - mostly, it’s accidental, but once in a while, he’ll tune in for more than a minute - and this man’s confession is absolutely boring, because it’s a soldier’s confession, except for all the things that Matt can hear between the words.

There, nestled in layers of denial and regret, is an entire universe of truths that the man isn’t saying, which is why Matt begins to listen to other things - his heart, his lungs, his breath, immense, hitching every once in a while, 

It’s like a litany of sadness, being laid before the priest, who from the sound of it doesn’t get it. The pain is real. It’s not the same thing as listening to a little girl cry out because her father hurts her, because there’s no innocence here, and maybe that makes it worse. There is no heartbreak like the heartbreak of a person who knows that there is no cure for it. 

So Matt listens, illicitly, knowing this is something _he’ll_ have to confess, except that it will be buried under the worst of what he’s done and he’s pretty sure this doesn’t crack the top ten things this week, and wonders how he didn’t hear it in the man’s voice before, a sadness that rivals what he felt when his father died.

After the man leaves, the priest comes out and Matt can feel the entire weight of his gaze like a shawl, and he begins to sweat a little. He’s ready to face down the entire community of thieves and gangsters in Hell’s Kitchen, but listening to someone else’s confessions makes him feel like he’s a kid again, and he’s been caught with a fistful of bubble gum that didn’t belong to him.

“Matthew,” the priest says, and Matt just turns his head up, because it’s a comfort to people, even if they know he can’t see them. “Really?”

Matt doesn’t say anything at first, but finally he sighs, and stands, and makes his way back into the confessional. This is a small misstep. He had better unburden it now.

~~~~

He hears the fight before he sees it, but even before he hears it, Steve is already gravitating in that direction, as if he’s a lodestone for trouble. Bucky would be less poetic about it. But Bucky isn’t here, Bucky isn’t anywhere, and Steve is untethered. The Avengers need him to clean up Hydra bases, and the Avengers need him to be a leader, and Steve still sometimes thinks why, why isn’t he out there with Sam, why isn’t he out there finding _home_?

But Steve is here, and there’s a fight, which is why he’s almost to the alley the exact moment someone is tossed out of it - a man with a knife and a gun, a man who is aiming that gun, a man who shoots into the alley before Steve can get to him, and then scrabbling off into the street.

And another man, short and stocky and who moves like every motion is absolutely necessary is running after him, except that Steve didn’t see him until it was too late, and they collide like high speed trains, complete with colorful fireworks, if fireworks can be used to describe some particularly foul language.

It’s the man’s voice that snaps him back to reality, because for a moment he thought, all that black, the height and the shape of his hips, his chest, the way he moved, like a weapon and not a person, that he couldn’t be that lucky. It couldn’t be something as simple as a crash in a fight, because if it were, then Steve should have done what his first instinct told him to do and hang out in every alley in Brooklyn until he needed to be fished out of a fight he couldn’t finish.

(There is no such thing anymore, is what Sam tells him. Fights he can’t finish. The next fight he can’t finish, Natasha says, is the fight that will finish him.)

But no, he’s not that lucky. 

Instead he’s just detangling himself as the other guy gets away, and that’s when he gets a rough shove that almost moves him, but doesn’t. “What are you doing here?” the man in the mask demands, furious.

“I was _walking_ ,” Steve snaps back in reply, but then the man is making his way back into the alley, and before Steve can stop him, he’s up the fire escapes, winding his way over the buildings, moving like a cat.

~~~~

The church is still and silent when Matt finds his way there. His cane is long gone, tossed into a dumpster somewhere - he’ll have to buy a new one, he already made off with his other two spares this month - and he takes his mask off, tucking it in his pocket. He should really go home, but he’s too angry. 

What was the guy thinking? What was _he_ thinking? He had known he was there, but who could have guessed his trajectory - no, that’s not right, who could have guessed how _fast_ he could move? Faster than Matt could ever hope to, that’s for sure. But the pimp who had a trace on those girls had gotten away, and now Matt was in the lurch again, and those girls-

He slams his fist against the wood, and it’s true that anger is a distraction because he doesn’t hear anyone until the man from before clears his throat. “You know,” he starts, “I thought you were blind.”

Matt thinks that if he could die of embarrassment, he would. How did he not know the guy was there? _How_? “How did you find me?” is the question he asks, which isn’t the question he wants to ask. 

“I know how to track a person down,” the guy says, sitting next to him. Matt balls his hands into fists, but doesn’t do anything, just sits there, quietly. He can feel the rage bottle up, store away for another person. For now, he thinks of the man’s confession. “You move fast, and you’re pretty sure of yourself.”

“For someone who can’t see?”

“For anyone,” the man replies, and somehow that defuses Matt’s anger. He remembers the sorrow. “I thought you were someone else.”

It’s a funny thing, realizing that people who are sighted are basically blind. He could have never - not in a million years, not as long as he could still hear and feel and _sense_ \- suspect that this man was anyone other than who he is. There was no one else who took up his shape, whose heart demanded to be heard, as if it had spent too much time whispering and now could only scream out, here, here, _here_. “You know a lot of people who spend their time fighting in alleys?” Matt snaps back, but it’s not nearly as irritated as he thought it would be. He realizes that he’s not actually all that angry anymore.

The man laughs. “You might be surprised,” he says, and he sounds amused. They sit there in silence for a minute, and Matt is about to leave, when the man speaks up again. “At first I thought you were a mirror, and then I thought you were a ghost.”

“You know, that guy got away, and someone might die because of it,” Matt replies, “so what do you think I am now?”

The man doesn’t say anything at first. He stands up, quiet, and Matt realizes the reason he didn’t realize he was there wasn’t just because he was angry. It’s because, for a man who is so big, he moves like he can’t let anyone hear him coming. “A piece of the past,” he says, which is cryptic enough, and then he’s going down the aisle. “Check the church garden,” the man adds, and then he’s gone.

And when Matt does, sitting there like a Christmas present without a bow, is the pimp.

~~~~

Steve goes to Brooklyn, and looks at apartments he can’t afford, and stays in alleys, and breathes.

And goes back to the Avengers tower. 

~~~~

People seem to think that because he’s blind, he must have an encyclopedic knowledge of every voice he has ever heard, but the brain doesn’t work that way, and neither does blindness. After all, watching television is sort of a pointless act for him, most days; when action is something he can’t really get involved in, Matt tunes it out, and he really doesn’t care for the aids for the visually impaired. He listens to the news a lot, but outside of the main correspondents and important figures like the President, he doesn’t pay that much attention to the rest of it.

Which is why at first it didn’t click.

It’s at church, again, in his suit, sitting across the aisle from the man, and listening him recite to the Nicene Creed, that it hits him harder than the pimp did, the other night. 

He waits as the ladies file up the aisle, avoiding him pointedly, and waits as the man ( _the man_ , ha!) stands too, and stands before him. Like last week, he crowds in a bit, but this week Matt realizes - he never touches him. If this is help, it’s not obvious. If this is help, it’s the kind of help he wanted as a kid - the kind where someone didn’t actually assume he needed it. They take communion, and he waits until they’re all in the garden. It’s a beautiful day. The sun is warm on Matt’s face.

“You were never going to tell me you’re Captain America, were you?” he says, just as Captain America ( _ha_!) is raising a forkful of cake to his mouth.

To his credit, Captain America doesn’t put the cake in his mouth. “This is apple cake, and that’s my favorite, so I want you to understand I’m not kidding around,” he says with a tiny hint of a smile in his voice. 

“You weren’t going to say anything,” Matt reiterates, as if he’s in court, not smiling at all. Inside, there’s a part of him, seven years old and reading comics for the first time, that is _screaming_ in glee. 

“Well, it didn’t really seem that important,” he says, and takes a bite of cake. “I’m running uptown in a couple of minutes,” he adds. 

“You owe me more than a gift-wrapped pimp,” Matt says, even though the seven year old in him is yelling _no, you fool! You don’t scold Captain America unless you’re-_

“ _Bucky Barnes_ ,” Matt says out loud, barely, but there no one there to hear it, to hear the secret that he heard between the breaths of Steve Rogers' confession.

He goes and takes a piece of cake, and Mrs. Barajas, who is seventy-two and walks with a cane but still fights to walk Matt to confession, squawks when she sees him. “Where is that nice young man?” she demands, “He promised us he wouldn’t let you out of his sight!”


End file.
